EXTENSION OF THE PAN-AFRICAN PROGRAMME FOR THE CONTROL OF EPIZOOTICS (PACE)

The Mid-Term review (MTR) of the PACE programme;conducted in October 2002. concluded that:the agreed completion date. October 2004, is no longer realistic and needs to be extended if any resultsare to be achieved." In response to this conclusion, the seventh biannual meeting of the programme'sAdvisory Committee recommended that: "... a consultant be appointed as soon as possible to review therecommendations of the MTR report in the light of the comments made by the PACE Coordination Unit(PCU), to design a possible extension of the PP"(PACE Programme).This Mission is the result of that teNiew and that recommendation. The Mission comprised twoconsultants: an Agricultural Economist, Mr Ian Talks, and a Veterinary Surgeon, Dr Guy Freeland. DrFreeland was briefed by the EC in Brussels and the OIE in Paris on 24th 2003 and commenced work inNairobi on 26thNovember 2003. Mr Talks joined the mission in Nairobi on December 2003.The time schedule for the Mission reports involved presentation of a draft Aide-Memoire to an in-houseworkshop on 17thDecember 2003, and submission of a final Aide-Memoire before departure on 21'December 2003. The consultants then wrote a draft report and returned to Nairobi to present it, on 9thJanuary 2004, to a larger workshop to which external stakeholders were also invited and, heeding thecomments made by the participants, submitted this Final Report on I4thJanuary 2004. Reports on thesetwo workshops are attached as Annex 6.Although designed to consolidate and build upon the Veterinary Service Strengthening initiatives set upunder the PARC programme. PACE differs from PARC in one major aspect: it was designed as aregional programme, managed by AU-IBAR, with thirty-two participating countries, whereas PARCwas designed as 26 country programmes harmonized in their complementary activities by a regionalcomponent in the IBAR office. Well intentioned though this change in design was, with its desire toestablish IBAR as the Centre of Excellence and co-ordinating authority for regional or continentalissues of livestock production, health, and trade, it has proved administratively too cumbersome and hasoccasioned much (but certainly not all) of the delay that the various country projects have experienced.The technical and institutional strengthening projects to be implemented at national level were to beadvised, guided and supported by bodies of technical expertise housed in seven Common Service Units(CSU) housed in the IBAR HQ in Nairobi arid its Regional Office in Bamako, Mali. These CSUs andthe PCU were to he funded from the regional component of the PACE budget.At the briefing in Brussels, Dr Freeland was advised that the EC was essentially sympathetic to therecommendation for a two-year extension, but that it would have to be alThrded with a very limitedextra budget (7% of the original budget). He was informed that it would probably be possible to find anextra EUR 5 million to cover the costs of the extension of the regional components of the programme,but that the costs of extension of the country projects should be afforded from within the original budgetallocated to them against the global work plans they had proposed. If necessary. the FinancingAgreement's `withdrawing rights' could be used to remove money allocated to the projects of onecountry in order to supplement the resources of another.In the time frame available, it was not possible for the consultants to meet representatives of more thana handful of the participating Countries, so they concentrated their efforts on interviews with themembers of the Progranune Co-ordination Unit (PCU) and various experts (African and expatriate)employed in each of the Common Service Units in Nairobi, as well as visiting the West Africa RegionalCo-ordination Unit (RCU) in Bamako, and the Headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa.It was clear from the outset that, if a two-year extension was to be proposed, it would necessitate aconsiderable pruning of the current operational resources and a narrower focusing of activities, outputs,and anticipated results. The mission therefore closely examined other options, including the possibilityof a full strength extension but for only one year, and the zero option of no extension at all.